
Vineet Kumar, Bharat Anand, Sunil Gupta and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
The authors discuss why students enjoy this case and the pros and cons of creating cases based on published sources.
Wonderful recognition
Winning this award is a wonderful recognition of the value of the case, and the depth of understanding possible when using the case approach to study important business challenges.
Digital transformation
This case focuses on the important issue of digital business models and digital transformation in the publishing industry. However, the principles and learnings involved broadly inform the dilemmas any firm or industry facing a disruption/transformation would experience.
The feedback received indicates it’s enjoyable due to the depth of analysis and insights that students and instructors are able to obtain, as well as a sense of reasoned judgment, debate and discussion that the case enables. It’s a mix of qualitative and quantitative forward-looking analysis that brings a lot of aspects of a business together.
Using published sources
The pros of using published sources are that it allows us to examine a broader range of business settings, firms and industries than might otherwise be possible.
The tradeoff is sometimes a lack of data and of the nuanced perspectives of executives that are often very helpful to our understanding. In industries that receive little attention such a perspective is often limited when using only published sources. In other examples, such as The New York Times, a wealth of information, including management perspectives and financial and customer data, is readily available from public sources.
Broadly applicable
The primary theme in the case is about understanding a potentially disruptive and transformative situation, which involves not just pricing or product strategy, but if the firm can survive doing business as usual without a full-scale transformation.
Such transformations bring about unique challenges involving how to manage the process, what the business should be, and understanding the external and internal factors that will enable its success. We see such transformation opportunities in a wide variety of industries, whether due to technological advances, infrastructure changes, changing consumer preferences, or even new regulations.
About the authors
Vineet Kumar is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Yale School of Management and was previously on the faculty of Harvard Business School.
e
vineet.kumar@yale.edu
tw @_vineetkumar
Bharat Anand is the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
e banand@hbs.edu
tw
@bharat_n_anand
Sunil Gupta is the Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
e sgupta@hbs.edu
tw
@guptsunil
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